[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 2] Where the Light Lost Its Way
Marle showed no hesitation in weaving through the crowd.
She narrowly avoided a bouquet in someone’s arms and lightly vaulted the wooden hoop a group of children were rolling along the ground. Following by the wrist she had caught, Crono had to bow an apology to two different passersby. Every time the girl in front glanced back, however, her face held far more amusement than remorse.
“It’s just a little farther, right?”
Crono pointed beyond the bell tower.
The blue flashes were no longer visible. In their place, Lucca’s voice carried from the farthest end of the square. She seemed to be telling the crowd to step back and shouting at her father not to touch that lever, both at almost the same time.
Marle slowed when she heard her.
“You said she’s your friend?”
Crono nodded.
“Is she always that loud?”
He considered the question, then nodded again.
Marle burst out laughing.
At the foot of the stone steps leading to the demonstration area stood a small candy stall. Red and yellow pieces of sugar on long sticks shone in the sunlight. Marle’s gaze caught on them. The feet that had carried her through the crowd in pursuit of Lucca’s invention came to the most natural stop in the world.
“Wait a moment.”
She released Crono’s wrist and approached the display.
The vendor held up a piece of candy shaped like a bell no larger than a finger.
“Only at the Millennial Fair. Made in the image of Leene’s Bell. Once today is over, you’ll never taste another.”
“I think you’ll sell the same thing tomorrow,” Marle said.
The man did not blink.
“Tomorrow it becomes a Millennial Fair souvenir.”
Marle gave the choice grave consideration. She looked back and forth between a red candy flavored with strawberry juice and a golden one made from hardened honey, asking three separate times how they tasted different. The customers behind her began to show their impatience, but Crono did not hurry her. He looked over their shoulders toward the demonstration platform.
Two round metal machines faced each other atop a high wooden stage. Each held a flat bed large enough for a person, and the wires and pipes connecting them crossed the floor in a tangle. Lucca’s father, Taban, knelt on one knee tightening a screw. Lucca had pushed a pair of oversized goggles onto her forehead and was tapping the needle of a gauge.
She raised her head.
Even in the crowd, Crono’s red hair was difficult to miss. The instant Lucca spotted him, her hand rose as if she had been waiting. Then she saw Marle beside him, and the hand stopped in midair.
Lucca pushed her glasses higher on her nose.
Crono knew that expression. It was the one she wore when she opened a new machine for the first time—or when an experiment produced a result she had not expected.
“I chose.”
Marle returned with the golden candy.
The vendor had tried until the last moment to persuade her that the red one was more popular, but she had chosen the one smelling of honey. She tasted the end and opened her eyes slightly wider. The choice appeared to have been a success.
“What?”
Marle followed Crono’s gaze to the stage.
Lucca was still watching them.
“That must be Lucca.”
Crono nodded.
“She’s staring at me.”
This time he offered no answer.
Marle brushed back her hair with the hand holding the candy. Despite being the same girl who had just run headlong through the crowd, she straightened her posture for a moment. Then, apparently finding herself ridiculous, she let her shoulders relax.
“Let’s go.”
At the top of the steps, Taban opened both arms to welcome the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, forgive the delay! But when one stands before a great invention, the waiting itself becomes part of history!”
“Father, don’t start yet,” Lucca said from beneath the control panel.
“History does not wait until we are ready.”
“If it explodes, at least you’ll earn a line in the history books.”
Without disturbing the smile he wore for the audience, Taban lowered his voice.
“We agreed not to use that word today.”
As Crono approached, Lucca put down her tool and rose.
“You’re late.”
She spoke to Crono without taking her eyes off Marle.
“I’m not.”
Lucca’s eyebrows rose. The fact that Crono had spoken first seemed less surprising than the fact that he had brought someone.
Marle hid the candy behind her back and offered a greeting before he could.
“Hello. I’m Marle.”
“Lucca.”
After the brief reply, Lucca looked at Crono.
He knocked his hands lightly together, trying to show that he and Marle had collided. Lucca’s mouth fell open as though she had understood something else entirely. Only when Crono shook his head, pointed toward the square, then toward Marle did her expression clear.
“Oh. You literally ran into each other.”
“What did you think he meant?” Marle asked.
“Nothing,” Lucca said quickly, turning away.
Taban watched the exchange and cleared his throat.
“Excellent timing, Crono. The invention of the century requires the first test subject of the century.”
Lucca glared at her father.
“Demonstration volunteer, not test subject. And it isn’t dangerous.”
“Of course not. In theory.”
Marle’s eyes lit up, apparently accepting that as a guarantee of safety.
“What does it do?”
Lucca launched into her explanation like someone who had been waiting for anyone to ask. The device created a short-range transference field between the two platforms, allowing matter to move from one to the other without being disassembled. Taban occasionally inserted the much more comprehensible phrase “instant teleportation,” and Lucca corrected him each time for oversimplifying.
Crono listened to about half the explanation before stepping onto the platform on the left.
Lucca stopped talking.
“Ready?”
He looked down at the metal plate beneath his feet. Several copper wires ran underneath it, and fragments of blue crystal had been set at regular intervals along the machine’s inner ring. Standing this close, he could smell the air after rain.
When Crono nodded, Lucca lowered her goggles.
“Don’t move. You can close your eyes if you want.”
“There’s nothing to fear!” Taban declared to the spectators.
With one hand on the lever, Lucca said quietly, “I know he makes it sound more frightening whenever he says that.”
The corner of Crono’s mouth moved slightly.
The machine began to hum.
At first, the vibration sounded like an insect crying beneath the floor. Blue fire soon raced around the metal ring, and the air between the platforms began to tremble. The spectators’ voices grew distant. Crono did not feel his body becoming lighter. Rather, the space surrounding him seemed suddenly to lose its weight.
His vision turned itself blue.
The instant he felt his feet leave the floor, the metal plate of the right-hand platform met the soles of his boots.
The crowd erupted into cheers a beat later.
Crono moved his arms and fingers. Nothing seemed wrong with his body. Only the ends of his hair stood a little higher from the static.
Lucca pushed her goggles back and released a long breath. For someone who had claimed to be certain of success, her relief was plain.
“You see?”
She turned to the crowd.
“Exactly as calculated.”
Taban raised both arms as though he had accomplished everything himself.
“A new age for Guardia has begun!”
While the applause continued, Marle approached the right-hand platform.
“You truly don’t feel anything strange?”
Crono stepped down and shook his head.
She looked between him and the machine. At some point she had finished the candy, leaving only the stick in her hand.
“I want to try.”
Lucca stopped and studied her.
“You’ve never seen this machine before.”
“That’s why I want to try it.”
Marle was already setting one foot on the left platform.
Taban welcomed the new volunteer with an eager gesture, but Lucca checked the readings again. Every needle remained within its normal range, and the residual heat from Crono’s transfer was falling rapidly.
“If you’re wearing any metal jewelry, you should remove it,” Lucca said.
Marle’s hand rose unconsciously to her throat. She touched the pendant beneath her collar and hesitated.
“I’d rather not take this off.”
“A small necklace should be…”
Lucca measured the distance between the chain and the machine with her eyes.
“It should be all right. Just make sure it stays against your body.”
Marle tucked the pendant deeper inside her clothes, then looked back at Crono and smiled.
“Wait for me on the other side.”
Crono moved beside the right platform.
Marle stood in the center of the metal plate. Since the moment they had met, she had moved without hesitation. Up close, however, with the machine’s rings rising at either side, her fingers briefly clenched the hem of her clothes. Crono stepped nearer the edge of the receiving platform. She released the cloth and lifted her chin.
“Ready.”
Lucca pulled the lever.
The low vibration traveled through the floor again.
Blue fire climbed the rings of the machine. At first, everything was the same as when Crono had gone through. The air trembled, and Marle’s hair began to rise in the electrical charge.
Then light escaped from beneath her collar.
Marle looked down.
“What is that?”
The blue stone in her pendant had become bright enough to shine through the fabric.
Lucca immediately tried to return the lever to its original position. Every needle on the control panel struck its limit at once. The machine’s low hum sharpened into a scream.
“Father, cut the power!”
Taban threw the breaker beside him.
The light did not go out.
Instead, a slender crack appeared in the empty air between the platforms. At first it looked like a single black thread caught in the sunlight. Then it opened upward and downward, widening into an oval breach. Neither the other side of the square nor the shadow of the machine showed through it. Blue light and black darkness mingled inside, churning like water.
The wind rushed inward.
Scraps of paper and dry grass lifted from the floor. People in the front row screamed and stumbled back. Taban spread his arms to hold the crowd away, while Lucca clung to the control panel and tried to read the gauges.
Marle tried to step down.
But the pendant at her throat pulled toward the breach. Its chain stretched taut and turned her body around.
“Crono!”
He reached for her.
Marle extended her arm. Just before their fingertips met, fierce light burst from the opening. Crono did not close his eyes. He saw Marle’s face distort in the blue glare and the red cloth of her vest turn inside out in the wind.
Her hand slipped from view.
Her entire body lifted and vanished into the darkness.
The pendant remained until the last instant.
Its chain came loose from her neck, hovered in the air, then struck the metal platform with one clear note.
At the same moment, the opening closed.
It seemed that every sound in the square had disappeared.
Only a thin smoke rose from the machine. The discarded candy stick rolled across the floor and stopped against the metal plate. No one among the spectators who had been cheering moments ago could speak.
Crono climbed onto the platform.
Only the pendant lay where Marle had stood. He bent and picked it up. Unlike when he had found it in the grass that morning, the jewel was hot. It trembled faintly in his palm like a pulse.
“Everyone, please leave the platform.”
Lucca’s voice cracked.
Taban shouted more loudly toward the crowd.
“The demonstration is over! There may be danger. Return to the lower square!”
People pushed past one another down the steps. One said the girl had vanished inside the machine. Another insisted it had been an explosion. Several looked back at Crono, but Taban moved to block their view.
When the crowd was gone, only the smells of burning and the broken wooden rail remained around the demonstration area.
Lucca hurried between the platforms, checking the wires. Her hands moved quickly, though even she seemed uncertain what she was looking for. The power was disconnected, and every blue crystal had gone cold.
“That wasn’t the transference field,” she murmured.
“At least, it wasn’t the one we made.”
Taban placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
“Lucca.”
“Give me a moment.”
She did not shrug off his hand, but neither did she turn around.
Crono raised the pendant.
A very faint light revolved within the stone.
Lucca went still when she saw it. Without touching the pendant, she brought her face close.
“This caused the reaction.”
Crono pointed to the place where the opening had closed.
“Where did she go?”
Lucca could not answer at once.
She stared at the empty air. Sunlight now lay where the blue breach had been.
“I don’t know where.”
She swallowed all the possibilities that might have followed those words and pressed her lips tight.
“But it left a trace. If we recreate the same conditions, we may be able to open it again.”
Taban shook his head.
“We don’t even know what just happened.”
“That’s why we have to find out.”
“We cannot send another person through.”
Lucca looked at Crono.
He was already standing in the center of the left platform.
Taban stepped toward him.
“Crono, come down.”
Crono closed his hand around the pendant.
He remembered Marle’s outstretched hand. The distance between their fingertips had been less than the breadth of one joint. Perhaps it was not true that he could have caught her if he had been a little faster. But he could not leave that distance where it was and simply go home.
Lucca studied his face for a long moment.
“You’re going.”
It was confirmation, not a question.
Crono nodded.
Taban looked from one of them to the other and closed his eyes. The sigh of someone who understood he could not stop them left him slowly.
“We have to make a way for him to return first.”
Lucca drew a small metal instrument from her belt. Slightly larger than her palm, it held several needles and a crystal panel.
“I recorded the wave pattern from the breach. It isn’t complete, but we can use it to find the same opening again.”
She connected a wire and opened the cover beneath the control panel. Taban at last moved to the opposite side and took hold of the breaker.
“Hold the pendant at the center of the apparatus.”
Crono opened his hand.
The blue jewel gleamed in the sunlight.
Lucca drew a breath.
“We don’t know where it leads. Check your surroundings as soon as you arrive. Even if you find Marle, don’t move until I can make a way to follow you—”
Crono looked at her.
Lucca stopped. It seemed she had accepted that none of the safety rules she knew meant anything here.
“Find her.”
Crono raised the pendant.
When the current began to flow, the jewel shone once more. The air between the machines caved inward. Wind pulled at the hem of his clothes, and a black gap opened within a border of blue.
This time, fear had a shape.
Stepping into a place without ground or sky could not be explained by courage alone. The thought that he might never return—and the thought that Marle might already be beyond anyone’s reach—made his body heavy.
Crono did not step back.
He looked once at Lucca and Taban, then threw himself into the opening.
Light rushed toward him from every direction.
The bells of the fair stretched into one long sound, then broke.
And the morning of the thousandth year closed behind him.
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